Re: [chairs] Upcoming IPR policy revision Q&A calls

["David Webber \(XML\)" <david@drrw.info>]

Hal,

It certainly is not at all clear.

A few things are key though from the open source perspective -

1) the need to support sub-licencing.
2) the need to have pre-participation statements that make
    it clear that the TC will not accept any IPR encumbered
    contributions.  Any discovered IPR items will be removed.
    This is inline with Apache practices already.

This would in effect be a 4th "IPR" choice - the Board
rejected such a request - but failed to say why.

I think no one is going to start a new TC period - until
this is cleared up.  Whose target are you painting on it?

Looks like a loose-loose situation to me - either you
accept IPR rules that will cut you off from a huge swathe
of implementers and nervous customers edgy about
adopting, or you run with a narrow band of vendors
prepared to accept the IPR and look like you are just
trying to use IPR to lock a market (even if you are not).

+1 agreed on USPTO practices.  Unfortunately they are now
patent junkies - needing the revenues from issuing them.
If they revised their practices to meet much more stringent
requirements - then they would only issue 10% or less of
patents compared to today - and that would gut their
rice-bowl.  Hence my statement - they have to go cold-turkey,
and someone has to have the guts (WTO or EU or China?)
to call the USGov out on that one.

DW

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Hal Lockhart" <hlockhar@bea.com>
To: "David Webber (XML)" <david@drrw.info>; <chairs@lists.oasis-open.org>;
"James Bryce Clark" <jamie.clark@oasis-open.org>
Cc: <mary.mcrae@oasis-open.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2005 4:29 PM
Subject: RE: [chairs] Upcoming IPR policy revision Q&A calls



> Most particularly those TC's with open source implementations
> appear to be facing a gathering storm of protest / backlash:-
>
>
> http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:9543:eipghffcbln
> bhjiggalm
>

These people are confused. Under the old rules, OASIS did not even require
RAND. Now you can start a TC which at least requires the participants to
commit to RF. Surely this is an improvement. Would they have protested if
OASIS had not changed its policy at all?

> Obviously we have two years yet before any of the TCs need to actually
> do anything about selecting any IPR policy at all.

Presumably those who think as you do will be anxious to convert their
existing TCs to RF with Limited Terms at the earliest possible moment.

My prediction is that nobody is going to start a new TC except under one of
the RF modes. (I have been wrong before.) It seems to me that if they do,
they will just be painting a target on their backs.

> Hopefully the USPTO
> will have abandoned their experiment with software patent awarding
> by then.

It has been over 20 years, it is hardly an experiment. The problem is not
hardware vs. software. (In the early 80's people were able to patent their
software, by showing that the process could be perfomed purely by hardware
and obtaining a patent for the process.) The problem is granting patents for
things which are obvious and well within the state of the art.

Hal